The crucial problem in the philosophy of psychiatry is to determine under which conditions certain behaviors, mental states, and personality traits should be regarded as symptoms of mental illnesses. Participants in the debate can be placed on a continuum of positions. On the one side of the continuum, there are naturalists who maintain that the concept of mental illness can be explained by relying on the conceptual apparatus of the natural sciences, such as biology and neuroscience. On the other side (...) of the continuum, there are normativists who maintain that the appropriate characterization of the concept of mental illness cannot avoid reference to epistemic, moral and other social values. Although, this article is primarily an introduction to the debate, we stress the importance of the normativist positions. (shrink)

After describing the disorder of psychopathy, I examine the theories and the evidence concerning the psychopaths’ deficient moral capacities. I first examine whether or not psychopaths can pass tests of moral knowledge. Most of the evidence suggests that they can. If there is a lack of moral understanding, then it has to be due to an incapacity that affects not their declarative knowledge of moral norms, but their deeper understanding of them. I then examine two suggestions: it is their deficient (...) practical reason or their stunted emotions that are at fault. The evidence supports both explanations. I conclude with an overview of the debate concerning whether they are morally or legally responsible for their actions. (shrink)

In this paper I defend an etiological theory of biological functions (according to which the proper function of a trait is the effect for which it was selected by natural selection) against three objections which have been influential. I argue, contrary to Millikan, that it is wrong to base our defense of the theory on a rejection of conceptual analysis, for conceptual analysis does have an important role in philosophy of science. I also argue that biology requires a normative notion (...) of a "proper function", and that a normative notion is not ahistorical. (shrink)

I defend the historical definition of "function" originally given in my Language, Thought and Other Biological Categories (1984a). The definition was not offered in the spirit of conceptual analysis but is more akin to a theoretical definition of "function". A major theme is that nonhistorical analyses of "function" fail to deal adequately with items that are not capable of performing their functions.

Foot , Hursthouse , and Thompson , along with other philosophers, have argued for a metaethical position, the natural goodness approach, that claims moral judgments are, or are on a par with, teleological claims made in the biological sciences. Specifically, an organism’s flourishing is characterized by how well they function as specified by the species to which they belong. In this essay, I first sketch the Neo-Aristotelian natural goodness approach. Second, I argue that critics who claim that this sort of (...) approach is inconsistent with evolutionary biology due to its species essentialism are incorrect. Third, I contend that combining the natural goodness account of natural-historical judgments with our best account of natural normativity, the selected effects theory of function, leads to implausible moral judgments. This is so if selected effects function are understood in terms of evolution by natural selection, but also if they are characterized in terms of cultural evolution. Thus, I conclude that proponents of the natural goodness approach must either embrace non-naturalistic vitalism or troubling moral revisionism. (shrink)

Jonathan Y. Tsou examines and defends positions on central issues in philosophy of psychiatry. The positions defended assume a naturalistic and realist perspective and are framed against skeptical perspectives on biological psychiatry. Issues addressed include the reality of mental disorders; mechanistic and disease explanations of abnormal behavior; definitions of mental disorder; natural and artificial kinds in psychiatry; biological essentialism and the projectability of psychiatric categories; looping effects and the stability of mental disorders; psychiatric classification; and the validity of the DSM's (...) diagnostic categories. The main argument defended by Tsou is that genuine mental disorders are biological kinds with harmful effects. This argument opposes the dogma that mental disorders are necessarily diseases that result from biological dysfunction. Tsou contends that the broader ideal of biological kinds offers a more promising and empirically ascertainable naturalistic standard for assessing the reality of mental disorders and the validity of psychiatric categories. (shrink)

Why did such highly abstract ideas as truth, knowledge, or justice become so important to us? What was the point of coming to think in these terms? This book presents a philosophical method designed to answer such questions: the method of pragmatic genealogy. Pragmatic genealogies are partly fictional, partly historical narratives exploring what might have driven us to develop certain ideas in order to discover what these do for us. The book uncovers an under-appreciated tradition of pragmatic genealogy which cuts (...) across the analytic-continental divide, running from the state-of-nature stories of David Hume and the early genealogies of Friedrich Nietzsche to recent work in analytic philosophy by Edward Craig, Bernard Williams, and Miranda Fricker. However, these genealogies combine fictionalizing and historicizing in ways that even philosophers sympathetic to the use of state-of-nature fictions or real history have found puzzling. To make sense of why both fictionalizing and historicizing are called for, the book offers a systematic account of pragmatic genealogies as dynamic models serving to reverse-engineer the points of ideas in relation not only to near-universal human needs, but also to socio-historically situated needs. This allows the method to offer us explanation without reduction and to help us understand what led our ideas to shed the traces of their practical origins. Far from being normatively inert, moreover, pragmatic genealogy can affect the space of reasons, guiding attempts to improve our conceptual repertoire by helping us determine whether and when our ideas are worth having. (shrink)

This book is a critical survey of and guidebook to the literature on biological functions. It ties in with current debates and developments, and at the same time, it looks back on the state of discourse in naturalized teleology prior to the 1970s. It also presents three significant new proposals. First, it describes the generalized selected effects theory, which is one version of the selected effects theory, maintaining that the function of a trait consists in the activity that led to (...) its differential persistence or reproduction in a population, and not merely its differential reproduction. Secondly, it advances “within-discipline pluralism” (as opposed to between-discipline pluralism) a new form of function pluralism, which emphasizes the coexistence of function concepts within diverse biological sub-disciplines. Lastly, it provides a critical assessment of recent alternatives to the selected effects theory of function, namely, the weak etiological theory and the systems-theoretic theory. The book argues that, to the extent that functions purport to offer causal explanations for the existence of a trait, there are no viable alternatives to the selected effects view. -/- The debate about biological functions is still as relevant and important to biology and philosophy as it ever was. Recent controversies surrounding the ENCODE Project Consortium in genetics, the nature of psychiatric classification, and the value of ecological restoration, all point to the continuing relevance to biology of philosophical discussion about the nature of functions. In philosophy, ongoing debates about the nature of biological information, intentionality, health and disease, mechanism, and even biological trait classification, are closely related to debates about biological functions. (shrink)

This paper reviews the debate on the notion of biological function and on functional explanation as this takes place in philosophy. It describes the different perspectives, issues, intuitions, theories and arguments that have emerged. The author shows that the debate has been too heavily influenced by the concerns of a naturalistic philosophy of mind and argues that in order to improve our understanding of biology the attention should be shifted from the study of intuitions to the study of the actual (...) practice of biological inquiry. (shrink)

Review of André Ariew, Robert Cummins & Mark Perlman (eds.) *Functions: New Essays in the Philosophy of Psychology and Biology* (2002).

The aim of the paper is to give an ontologically informed account of disease that can aid in the construction of disease ontologies. The paper begins by distinguishing cases of diseases from what are purely structural abnormalities, referred to as ‘disorders’. The paper then presents a causal model apt for the understanding of disease that distinguishes diseases from both their causes and their potential effects. The analysis of disease defended treats disease in terms of distortions of standard cellular network processes, (...) where those distortions are incapable of self remedy and produce biologically disadvantageous symptoms. (shrink)

According to historical theories of biological function, a trait's function is determined by natural selection in the past. I argue that, in addition to historical functions, ahistorical functions ought to be recognized. I propose a theory of biological function which accommodates both. The function of a trait is the way it contributes to fitness and fitness can only be determined relative to a selective regime. Therefore, the function of a trait can only be specified relative to a selective regime. Apart (...) from its desirable pluralism, only this view of relational function can support the function/accident and function/malfunction distinctions commonly thought to be part of the concept of function. Furthermore, only relational function correctly characterizes the explanatory consequences of function attributions in evolutionary biology. (shrink)

Recently, concerns have been raised about the phenomenon of ‘overdiagnosis’, the diagnosis of a condition that is not causing harm, and will not come to cause harm. Along with practical, ethical, and scientific questions, overdiagnosis raises questions about our concept of disease. In this paper, we analyse overdiagnosis as an epistemic problem and show how it challenges many existing accounts of disease. In particular, it raises ques- tions about conceptual links drawn between disease and dysfunction, harm, and risk. We argue (...) that ‘disease’ should be considered a vague concept with a non-classical structure. On this view, overdiagnosed cases are ‘borderline’ cases of disease, falling in the zone between cases that are clearly disease, and cases that are clearly not disease. We then develop a pre ́cising definition of disease designed to provide practical help in preventing and limiting overdiagnosis. We argue that for this purpose, we can define disease as dysfunction that has a significant risk of causing severe harm to the patient. (shrink)

Christopher Boorse’s biostatistical theory of medical disorder claims that biological part-dysfunction (i.e., failure of an internal mechanism to perform its biological function), a factual criterion, is both necessary and sufficient for disorder. Jerome Wakefield’s harmful dysfunction analysis of medical disorder agrees that part-dysfunction is necessary but rejects the sufficiency claim, maintaining that disorder also requires that the part-dysfunction causes harm to the individual, a value criterion. In this paper, I present two considerations against the sufficiency claim. First, I analyze Boorse’s (...) central argument for the sufficiency claim, the “pathologist argument,” which takes pathologists’ intuitions about pathology as determinative of medical disorder and conclude that it begs the question and fails to support the sufficiency claim. Second, I present four counterexamples from the medical literature in which salient part-dysfunctions are considered nondisorders, including healthy disease carriers, HIV-positive status, benign mutations, and situs inversus totalis, thus falsifying the sufficiency claim and supporting the harm criterion. (shrink)

Les critiques actuelles des diagnostics psychiatriques, qu’elles viennent des antipsychiatres, des béhavioristes, des constructionnistes sociaux, des szasziens et des foucaldiens, rejettent généralement l’idée que le concept de trouble mental est légitime du point de vue médical, ne laissant donc aucun argument solide à partir duquel il soit possible de mener une critique constructive et d’établir un dialogue avec la psychiatrie. Ces positions ne réussissent également pas à expliquer les fortes intuitions populaires qui permettent aux gens de distinguer les troubles psychologiques (...) des autres conditions psychologiques négatives. Selon l’analyse de la dysfonction préjudiciable présentée dans cet article, un trouble mental est une condition : 1) préjudiciable, un concept évaluatif basé sur des valeurs sociales ; et 2) causée par une dysfonction psychologique, un concept factuel se rapportant à un mécanisme psychologique qui accomplit une fonction pour laquelle il a été biologiquement conçu . L’analyse DP est ainsi une position hybride qui requiert à la fois que des critères évaluatifs et factuels soient satisfaits pour garantir l’attribution d’un trouble. Nous argumentons que l’analyse DP réussit admirablement à expliquer les jugements intuitifs quant à ce qui est un trouble et à ce qui en n’est pas. La composante factuelle permet également de critiquer le critère diagnostique du DSM, ce que nous ferons à l’aide de plusieurs exemples . Ces critiques déterminent où le DSM a dévié de ses propres hypothèses et ainsi considéré comme des troubles ce qui n’en est pas. Elles expliquent également pourquoi les tentatives du DSM de remédier au problème en introduisant le critère du « cliniquement significatif » échouent.Current antipsychiatric, behaviorist, social-constructivist, Szaszian, and Foucauldian critiques of psychiatric diagnosis generally reject mental disorder as a medically legitimate concept, thus allowing no place to stand from which to mount a constructive critique and dialogue with psychiatry. These views also fail to explain the robust folk intuitions by which people distinguish psychological disorders from other negative psychological conditions. According to the harmful dysfunction analysis presented in this paper, a mental disorder is condition that is harmful, a value concept judged by social values ; and caused by a psychological dysfunction, a factual concept referring to failure of a psychological mechanism to perform a function for which it is biologically designed . The HD analysis is thus a hybrid account that requires both value and factual criteria to be satisfied before attribution of disorder is warranted. It is argued that the HD analysis has considerable success in explaining intuitive judgments about disorder versus non-disorder. The factual component also allows for a critique of DSM diagnostic criteria for specific categories, with several examples discussed. These critiques identify where the DSM has deviated from its own deepest assumptions and labeled non-disorders as disorders, and why the DSM’s own attempts to fix the problem, as with the «clinical significance» criterion, do not succeed. (shrink)

The biological sciences employ a concept of normality that must be distinguished from statistical or value concepts. The concept of normality is presupposed in the standard explications of biological functions, and it is crucial to the strategy of explanation by approximations in, for example, physiology. Nevertheless, this concept of normality does not seem to be captured in the language of physics. Thus attempts at explaining the methodological relationship between the biological sciences and the physical sciences by concentrating only on the (...) concept of biological function cannot go very far. An analysis of the concept of normality is also necessary. (shrink)

According to one prominent form of moral individualism, how an individual is to be treated is determined, not by considering her group membership, but by considering her own particular characteristics. On this view, so this paper argues, it is not possible to provide an account of why people with profound cognitive disabilities are owed respect. This conclusion is not new, but it has been challenged by writers who are sympathetic to the recommended emphasis. The paper aims to show that the (...) conclusion cannot be avoided, and to look at what is to be learned from an approach that leads us to this point. It suggests that any account of why profoundly disabled people are owed respect will have to supplement discussion of their particular capacities with a normative account of their humanity. (shrink)

A new theory that naturalizes biological function is explained and compared with earlier etiological and causal role theories. Etiological theories explain functions from how they are caused over their evolutionary history. Causal role theories analyze how functional mechanisms serve the current capacities of their containing system. The new proposal unifies the key notions of both kinds of theories, but goes beyond them by explaining how functions in an organism can exist as factors with autonomous causal efficacy. The goal-directedness and normativity (...) of functions exist in this strict sense as well. The theory depends on an internal physiological or neural process that mimics an organism’s fitness, and modulates the organism’s variability accordingly. The structure of the internal process can be subdivided into subprocesses that monitor specific functions in an organism. The theory matches well with each intuition on a previously published list of intuited ideas about biological functions, including intuitions that have posed difficulties for other theories. (shrink)

The most recent resurgence of philosophical attention to the so-called ‘functional talk' in the sciences can be summarized in terms of the following questions: (Q1) What kind of restrictions, and in particular, what kind of evolutionary restrictions as well as to what extent, is involved in functional ascriptions? (Q2) How can we account for the explanatory import of function-ascribing statements? This paper addresses these questions through a modified version of Cummins' functional analysis. The modification in question is concerned with phylogenetical (...) restrictions on causal role functions, and it stems from an analysis of some primary areas in molecular biology. I examine how evolutionary consideration affects the so-called ‘function-analytical explanatory strategy' (Cummins [1975] 1998, 2002). Finally, I argue that the neo-functional analysis here proposed accounts for a certain convergence between the main rival theories of biological function. ‡I wish to thank David Davies, Eva Jablonka, Thomas Reydon, and Marcel Weber for their helpful comments. †To contact the author, please write to: Department of Philosophy, University of Rijeka, Omladinska 14, 51000 Rijeka, Croatia; e-mail: [email protected]. (shrink)

This essay provides an account of how to distinguish between health and pathology of trait tokens in medical theory. It proposes to distinguish between two health/pathology concepts—health/pathology pertaining to survival and health/pathology pertaining to reproduction. It defines measures for survival-efficiency and reproduction-efficiency of performances of physiological functions. It provides an account of how, using the efficiency measures, to draw the line between health and pathology. The account draws, but seeks to improve, on Christopher Boorse’s biostatistical theory. In relation to that (...) theory, the suggested account has the advantages that it defines efficiency and that it harmonizes with judgments in medical theory in cases of common diseases and “normal aging.” Furthermore, the essay argues against a competing idea of how to improve on the biostatistical theory, advocated by Peter Schwartz and Daniel Hausman. (shrink)

The most recent resurgence of philosophical attention to the so-called ‘functional talk’ in the sciences can be summarized in terms of the following questions: (Q1) What kind of restrictions, and in particular, what kind of evolutionary restrictions as well as to what extent, are involved in functional ascriptions? (Q2) How can we account for the explanatory import of function-ascribing statements? This paper addresses these questions on the basis of a modified version of Cummins’ functional analysis. The modification in question is (...) concerned with phylogenetical restrictions on causal role functions, and it stems from an analysis of some primary areas in molecular biology. I examine how evolutionary consideration affects the so-called “function-analytical explanatory strategy” (Cummins [1975] 1998, 2002). Finally, I argue that the neo-functional analysis here proposed accounts for a certain convergence between the main rival theories of biological function. (shrink)

We introduce a new type of pluralism about biological function that, in contrast to existing, demonstrates a practical integration among the term’s different meanings. In particular, we show how to generalize Sandra Mitchell’s notion of integrative pluralism to circumstances where multiple epistemic tools of the same type are jointly necessary to solve scientific problems. We argue that the multiple definitions of biological function operate jointly in this way based on how biologists explain the evolution of protein function. To clarify how (...) our account relates to existing views, we introduce a general typology for monist and pluralist accounts along with standardized criteria for judging which is best supported by evidence. (shrink)

Several philosophers have recently argued that phenomenology is well-suited to help understand the concepts of health, disease, and illness. The general claim is that by better analysing how illness appears to or is experienced by ill individuals—incorporating the first-person perspective—some limitations of what is seen as the currently dominant third-person or ‘naturalistic’ approaches to understand health and disease can be overcome. In this article, after discussing some of the main insights and benefits of the phenomenological approach, I develop three general (...) critiques of it. First, I show that what is often referred to as naturalism tends to be misunderstood and/or misrepresented, resulting in straw-man arguments. Second, the concept of normality is often problematically employed such that some aspects of naturalism are actually presupposed by many phenomenologists of medicine. Third, several of the key phenomenological insights and concepts, e.g. having vs. being a body, the alienation of illness, the epistemic role of the first-person perspective, and the idea of health within illness, each bring with them new problems that limit their utility. While acknowledging the possible contributions of phenomenology, these criticisms point to some severe limitations of bringing phenomenological insights to bear on the problems facing philosophy of medicine that should be addressed if phenomenology is to add anything substantially new to its debates. (shrink)

According to simulationism, the function of episodic memory is not to remember the past, but to help construct representations of possible future episodes, by drawing together features from different experiential sources. This article suggests that the relationship between the traditional storehouse view, on which the function of memory is remembering, and the simulationist approach is more complicated than has been typically acknowledged. This is attributed, in part, to incorrect interpretations of what remembering on the storehouse view requires. Further, by appeal (...) to function pluralism, the article questions both the assumption that the traditional view and simulationism are inconsistent, and the simulationist’s inference to the best explanation strategy that is based upon this assumption. The article then provides an evaluation of the simulationist argument against the traditional view, and finds it in need of further support. (shrink)

Function and teleology can be naturalized either by reference to systems with a particular type of organization or by reference to a particular kind of history. As functions are generally ascribed to states or traits according to their current role and regardless of their origin, etiological accounts are inappropriate. Here, I offer a systems-theoretical interpretation as a new version of an organizational account of functionality, which is more comprehensive than traditional cybernetic views and provides explicit criteria for empirically testable function (...) ascriptions. I propose, that functional states, traits or items are those components of a complex system, which are under certain circumstances necessary for their self-re-production. I show, how this notion can be applied in intra- and trans-generational function ascriptions in biology, how it can deal with the problems of multifunctionality and functional equivalents, and how it relates to concepts like fitness and adaptation. Finally, I argue that most intentional explanations can be treated as functional explanations. (shrink)

Ageing is often deemed bad for people and something that ought to be eliminated. An important aspect of this normative aspect of ageing is whether ageing, i.e., senescence, is a disease. In this essay, I defend a theory of disease that concludes that ageing is not a disease, based on an account of natural function. I also criticize other arguments that lead to the same conclusion. It is important to be clear about valid reasons in this debate, since the failure (...) of bad analyses is exploited by proponents of the view that ageing is indeed a disease. Finally, I argue that there could be other reasons for attempting to eradicate senescence, which have to do with an evaluative assessment of ageing in relation to the good life. I touch on some reasons why ageing might be good for people and conclude that we cannot justify generalized statements in this regard. (shrink)

Accounts of the concepts of function and dysfunction have not adequately explained what factors determine the line between low‐normal function and dysfunction. I call the challenge of doing so the line‐drawing problem. Previous approaches emphasize facts involving the action of natural selection (Wakefield 1992a, 1999a, 1999b) or the statistical distribution of levels of functioning in the current population (Boorse 1977, 1997). I point out limitations of these two approaches and present a solution to the line‐drawing problem that builds on the (...) second one. (shrink)

The concept of mental disorder is often defined by reference to the notion of mental dysfunction, which is in line with how the concept of disease in somatic medicine is often defined. However, the notions of mental function and dysfunction seem to suffer from some problems that do not affect models of physiological function. Functions in general have a teleological structure; they are effects of traits that are supposed to have a particular purpose, such that, for example, the heart serves (...) the goal of pumping blood. But can we single out mental functions in the same way? Can we identify mental functions scientifically, for instance, by applying evolutionary theory? Or are models of mental functions necessarily value-laden? I want to identify several philosophical problems regarding the notion of mental function and dysfunction and point out some possible solutions. As long as these questions remain unanswered, definitions of mental disorder that rest upon the concept of mental dysfunction will lack a secure foundation. (shrink)

There is a conceptual crisis in the biomedical sciences that is particularly salient in psychopathology research. Underlying the crisis is a controversy that pertains to the current medical model of disease that largely draws from causal-mechanistic explanations. The bedrock of this model is the analysis of biological part-dysfunctions that aims at unequivocally defining a pathological condition and demarcating it from its neighboring entities. This endeavor has led to a quest for physiological, biochemical, and genetic signatures. Yet, so far there is (...) little evidence for reliable biomarkers for any mental disorder. The contemporary biomedical paradigm largely ignores historical, dynamic, and system-level aspects—a view that has contributed much to the conceptual disjunction of the patient as a person from his/her disease. Notwithstanding the impressive progress in the biomedical sciences, increasingly more critics question whether the constituting framework is sufficient to convey a comprehensive understanding of illnesses, especially mental illnesses. Thus, the medical model urgently requires an update. But rather than revamping it by methodological advancements, it will be necessary to critically review its philosophical roots. The most problematic issues that require reworking are: the preponderance of the biostatistical theory; the undue decoupling of physiological from evolutionary explanations of function; the clinging to the Modern Synthesis ; and the neglect of dynamic and system-level properties. The proposed overhaul requires the heeding of historical explanations that draw from the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis as well as systems biology approaches for tackling multilevel and dynamic phenomena of complex systems. (shrink)

There is a conceptual crisis in the biomedical sciences that is particularly salient in psychopathology research. Underlying the crisis is a controversy that pertains to the current medical model of disease that largely draws from causal-mechanistic explanations. The bedrock of this model is the analysis of biological part-dysfunctions that aims at unequivocally defining a pathological condition and demarcating it from its neighboring entities. This endeavor has led to a quest for physiological, biochemical, and genetic signatures. Yet, so far there is (...) little evidence for reliable biomarkers for any mental disorder. The contemporary biomedical paradigm largely ignores historical, dynamic, and system-level aspects—a view that has contributed much to the conceptual disjunction of the patient as a person from his/her disease. Notwithstanding the impressive progress in the biomedical sciences, increasingly more critics question whether the constituting framework is sufficient to convey a comprehensive understanding of illnesses, especially mental illnesses. Thus, the medical model urgently requires an update. But rather than revamping it by methodological advancements, it will be necessary to critically review its philosophical roots. The most problematic issues that require reworking are: the preponderance of the biostatistical theory; the undue decoupling of physiological from evolutionary explanations of function; the clinging to the Modern Synthesis ; and the neglect of dynamic and system-level properties. The proposed overhaul requires the heeding of historical explanations that draw from the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis as well as systems biology approaches for tackling multilevel and dynamic phenomena of complex systems. (shrink)

Teleosemantic theories aspire to develop a naturalistic account of intentional agency and thought by appeal to biological teleology. In particular, most versions of teleosemantics study the emergence of intentionality in terms of biological purposes introduced by Darwinian evolution. The aim of this paper is to argue that the sorts of biological purposes identified by these evolutionary approaches do not allow for a satisfactory account of intentionality. More precisely, I claim that such biological purposes should be attributed to reproductive chains or (...) lineages, rather than to individual traits or organisms, whereas the purposes underlying intentional agency and thought are typically attributed to individuals. In the last part of the paper I suggest that related difficulties are also faced, despite appearances, by accounts of intentionality relying on alternative organizational approaches to biological teleology. (shrink)

In the philosophical debate on aging, it is common to raise the question of the theoretical definition of aging in terms of its possible characterization as a disease. Understanding aging as a disease seems to imply its medicalization, which has important practical consequences. In this paper, we analyze the question of whether aging is a disease by appealing to the concept of disease in the philosophy of medicine. As a result of this analysis, we argue that a pragmatist approach to (...) the conception of disease is the best alternative to highlight the relevance of the medicalization of aging. From this pragmatist perspective, it can be seen that the notion of aging is going through a conceptual change, and aging can today be understood as a not radically different process from any other condition that is usually considered a disease. (shrink)

The organizational account of biological functions interprets functions as contributions of a trait to the maintenance of the organization that, in turn, maintains the trait. As has been recently argued, however, the account seems unable to provide a unified grounding for both intra- and cross-generation functions, since the latter do not contribute to the maintenance of the same organization which produces them. To face this ‘ontological problem’, a splitting account has been proposed, according to which the two kinds of functions (...) require distinct organizational definitions. In this article, we propose a solution for the ontological problem, by arguing that intra- and cross-generation functions can be said to contribute in the same way to the maintenance of the biological organization, characterized in terms of organizational self-maintenance. As a consequence, we suggest maintaining a unified organizational account of biological functions. (shrink)

In contrast to the “normativist” view, “naturalist” theorists claim that the concept of health refers to natural or normal states and propose different characterizations of healthy and diseased conditions that are meant to be objectivist and biologically grounded. In this article, we examine the core concept of these naturalist accounts of disease, i.e., the concept of biological malfunction, and develop a new formulation of the notion of malfunction following the recent organizational approach to functions in the philosophy of biology. We (...) focus on the notions of adaptive regulation and functional presupposition to develop a new conceptual framework that justifies the ascription of malfunctional behaviors to biological systems according to the embodied normativity of biological organizations. (shrink)

I present an account of mental representation based upon the ‘SINBAD’ theory of the cerebral cortex. If the SINBAD theory is correct, then networks of pyramidal cells in the cerebral cortex are appropriately described as representing, or more specifically, as modelling the world. I propose that SINBAD representation reveals the nature of the kind of mental representation found in human and animal minds, since the cortex is heavily implicated in these kinds of minds. Finally, I show how SINBAD neurosemantics can (...) provide accounts of misrepresentation, equivocal representation, twin cases, and Frege cases. (shrink)

Contemporary analyses of biological function almost invariably advocate a naturalistic analysis, grounding biological functions in some feature of the mind-independent world. Many recent accounts suggest that no single analysis will be appropriate for all cases of use and that biological teleology should be split into several distinct categories. This paper argues that such accounts have paid too little attention to the way in which functional language is used, concentrating instead on the types of situation in which it is used. An (...) example of the role of teleology in science is examined and, on the basis of conclusions drawn from this, an alternative unifying analysis is proposed. It is suggested that, contrary to naturalistic accounts, teleology in biology carries no ontological commitment whatsoever to any class of mind-independent entities or properties. Instead, it is best regarded as a methodological device which is used to focus interest, formulate research perspectives and facilitate the structuring of certain questions or types of question that are pertinent in a given context of interest. (shrink)

The meaning of function statements is not clear. Several authors have come up with different explications. By interviewing biologists I tried to get a picture of how they think about function. Two explications of Feature X of organism S has function F came to the fore: (1) X contributes to F and F contributes to survival/reproduction of S and (2) X does F and that contributes to the evolutionary development of X in S via natural selection. Most biologists also related (...) function to adaptation. Gould and Vrba criticize the ordinary use of adaptation in biology. They propose to use it only in the sense of features developed by natural selection for their current role and to use exaptation for features enhancing fitness, but not developed for this by natural selection. This, however, leaves a terminological gap, because as a consequence only effects of adaptations are functions. Effects of exaptations and effects which are not beneficial, like the production of heart sounds, are placed on the same level. That is not in accordance with the practice of biology. That is why a distinction is made between general, adaptive and exaptive functions: function as a pluralistic concept. (shrink)

David Papineau’s model of scientific reduction, contrary to his intent, appears to enable a naturalist realist account of the primitive normativity involved in a biological adaptation’s being “for” this or that (say the eye’s being for seeing). By disabling the crucial anti-naturalist arguments against any such reduction, his model would support a cognitivist semantics for normative claims like “The heart is for pumping blood, and defective if it doesn’t.” No moral claim would follow, certainly. Nonetheless, by thus “pressing from below” (...) we may learn something about moral normativity. For instance, suppose non-cognitivists like Mackie are right that the semantics of normative claims should be “unified”: if the semantics of moral claims is non-cognitivist, so too is that of all normative claims. Then, assuming that a naturalist reduction does yield a sound cognitivist account of the primitive normativity, it would follow that our semantics of moral claims is cognitivist as well. (shrink)

David Papineau's model of scientific reduction, contrary to his intent, appears to enable a naturalist realist account of the primitive normativity involved in a biological adaptation's being “for” this or that (say the eye's being for seeing). By disabling the crucial anti‐naturalist arguments against any such reduction, his model would support a cogni‐tivist semantics for normative claims like “The heart is for pumping blood, and defective if it doesn't.” No moral claim would follow, certainly. Nonetheless, by thus “pressing from below” (...) we may learn something about moral normativity. For instance, suppose non‐cognitivists like Mackie are right that the semantics of normative claims should be “unified”: if the semantics of moral claims is non‐cognitivist, so too is that of all normative claims. Then, assuming that a naturalist reduction does yield a sound cognitivist account of the primitive normativity, it would follow that our semantics of moral claims is cognitivist as well. (shrink)

Monothematic delusions involve a single theme, and often occur in the absence of a more general delusional belief system. They are cognitively atypical insofar as they are said to be held in the absence of evidence, are resistant to correction, and have bizarre contents. Empiricism about delusions has it that anomalous experience is causally implicated in their formation, whilst rationalism has it that delusions result from top down malfunctions from which anomalous experiences can follow. Within empiricism, two approaches to the (...) nature of the abnormality/abnormalities involved have been touted by philosophers and psychologists. One-factor approaches have it that monothematic delusions are a normal response to anomalous experiences whilst two-factor approaches seek to identify a clinically abnormal pattern of reasoning in addition to anomalous experience to explain the resultant delusion. In this paper we defend a one-factor approach. We begin by making clear what we mean by atypical, abnormal, and factor. We then identify the phenomenon of interest and overview one and two-factor empiricism about its formation. We critically evaluate the cases for various second factors, and find them all wanting. In light of this we turn to our one-factor account, identifying two ways in which ‘normal response’ may be understood, and how this bears on the discussion of one-factor theories up until this point. We then conjecture that what is at stake is a certain view about the epistemic responsibility of subjects with delusions, and the role of experience, in the context of familiar psychodynamic features. After responding to two objections, we conclude that the onus is on two-factor theorists to show that the one-factor account is inadequate. Until then, the one-factor account ought to be understood as the default position for explaining monothematic delusion formation and retention. We don’t rule out the possibility that, for particular subjects with delusions there may be a second factor at work causally implicated in their delusory beliefs but, until the case for the inadequacy of the single factor is made, the second factor is redundant and fails to pick out the minimum necessary for a monothematic delusion to be present. (shrink)

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